The Fight
by nothingwillsuffice
Summary: Following her surrender to the Avatar, Kuvira is wrongly sentenced to a life in prison. Motivated by gruesome nightmares, she spends the long hours between insipid awareness and fitful rest writing down the story behind her campaign and the origin of her motivations.
1. A Note

On the first day of the second month, 175 AG, I began to serve my sentence of life imprisonment in Feicuì prison following the verdict of the United Republic court.

The decision, though very unwise, has given me the time to properly detail what my campaign was truly about and all the good that it achieved-- all the good that the court was very quick to overlook and dismiss entirely. This record I am writing is essentially a defense of the Earth Empire in this regard, as well as my justification for pleading not guilty.

It should be known that my childhood was much more prosperous than most others', and that my origins which will also be detailed in this record are purely background for perspective and are not an appeal for pity. Growing up in poor Ji Qiang, in rural Gaoling, and in Zaofu with Suyin Beifong, I learned that the idea of a royal family passing a title from one generation to the next was archaic, and that technology and innovation should be what drives a nation forward. It was the pathetic rule of kings and queens that caused the Earth Kingdom to descend into such incredible disarray. In light of my complicated upbringing, you will see why I dedicated _three year__s_ to getting the Earth Kingdom back on track, and why there was no way that I was going to allow it to slip back into the Dark Ages that the monarchy had created.

I understand that many saw me as a tyrant while I served-- it is the natural desire of man to seek perfection, to seek indomitability, and to seek control, so my rapid rise to authority must have seemed like the sure results of crooked and ambitious dealings-- but I earned my station honorably, with full support and recognition fron the other world powers, and sought nothing but the great fulfillment of giving my people what they deserve. All I wanted was to restore balance to my home and to show peace to those who had never known it. You may see this as a tyrannical attempt to seize the position of Avatar in Korra's stead, or as a power grab for the Earth Kingdom's resources, but I assure you that that is not the case; I knew what had to be done, I knew that I could do it, and I knew that no one else would. It is that simple.

Finally, before I go forward with my explanation, I feel it only just to mention several important men and women who were also wrongly convicted and/or killed the day I surrendered because of their integral parts in the success of the Earth Empire:

Beifong, Baatar, Jr., Head Engineer and Sub-Command, born 150 AG

Delan, Xiao, Engineer, born 154 AG

Giao, Kivar, Chemist, born 141 AG

Huo, Shu, Chemist, born 152 AG

Peng, Qara, Physicist, born 145 AG

Xuefeng, Gi, General, born 139 AG

Xu, Fen, General, born 138 AG

Zhao, Ju, General, born 147 AG

The following, for one reason or another, do not have a family name:

Anju, General, born 147 AG

Bipin, Strategist, born 140 AG

Ela, Strategist, born 139 AG

Guan, General, born 139 AG

Jaya, Operations Chief, born 144 AG

Kanan, General, born 138 AG

Lau, Head of Camp Li Fei, born 154 AG

Nidhi, Head of Camp Gaoling, born 145 AG

The so-called just and impartial court of the United Republic allowed these good people no more a hearing than they allowed me. As such, and as their leader and consequent person responsible for their fates, I dedicate this first volume to them and their contributions to our goal.

Feicuì prison,

\--, Kuvira

**:A/N:**

**For the purposes of this story, **t**he beginning will follow the canon comics for the most part and then branch away into my own creative genius (mwahaha).**

**Also, for those of you who are not yet aware, I am very much alluding the structure of Adolf Hitler's work, "Mein Kampf" while writing this. I saw a meme about Kuvira being a Fascist, and I was like, "IDEA!" and started this****.**

**You're welcome.**


	2. Chapter I: My Life Before Zaofu

**Volume I**

**A Retrospect**

**Chapter I**

**My Life Before Zaofu**

I was born in the fifth month of the year, 151 AG, in the Earth Kingdom city-state of Ji Qiang. My island was not far from the state of Gaoling and the enclave where Zaofu was built. In comparison to the rest of the kingdom at the time of my birth, it could be said that Ji Qiang fared well. But it was still far behind the rest of the world, and it still suffered the Earth Kingdom's inadequate leadership.

I was born and raised in Ji Qiang's capital for the first seven years of my life. The capital was known for its adept craftsmen and trade, given that it was an island with several ports and that intercepted many things from many different regions of the kingdom. Now that I look back on it, Ji Qiang sort of resembled the United Republic of Nations. Though they differed in the high diversity of origin in the Republic and the almost completely Earth Nation origin of those who lived in Ji Qiang, they had a common diversity among the types of people that inhabited the land. The community was comprised of many happy, fortunate people looking for something new and exciting in life, and many unhappy, unfortunate people looking for a new start. There were some who had been all over the kingdom, and others all over the world; and some who had never known anything outside of Ji Qiang's waters. Very accomplished visitors sometimes came to see a precious bounty of unique, ancient things that my people had held onto since the beginnings of their families.

This was due to the traditional aspect of Ji Qiang which characterized the whole of the Earth Kingdom. In great contrast with the Republic's modernist and revolutionary ideals, my homeland was plagued with a steadfast and almost ignorant prioritization of tradition. I truly believe that out of all the nations (even the Air Nomads who isolated themselves from the rest of the planet before the genocide), the Earth Kingdom has changed the least since its establishment.

I was not poor when I lived on Ji Qiang island; I didn't have a childhood full of struggle and strife. My parents were well off and controlled much of the island's economic activity, making me something of an heiress where I lived. However, I could never view things that way; my parents certainly never did.

My parents were arguably good to me. They fed me, clothed me, housed me, made sure I went to school, and taught me right from wrong. From what I can remember, I wore nicer clothes and had nicer things too. Yes, I had a good livelihood as a child. The problem was that-- of which I am now fairly certain-- my parents saw me as more of a mistake than a precious addition to the family; something they had to take care of now that they had gone and created it. I don't believe they ever truly planned on having a child, and certainly not one so unruly. I will admit that I often refused to abide by my parents' restricting rules. I will admit that I was a stubborn child, and that I resisted because the logic and reasoning of my elders, as most children, did not make sense to me. But I never acted out simply for the sake; I knew-- in a way that one knows to breathe or to blink-- that my parents didn't care about me, and that I was not truly living.

My father was a retired soldier who had withdrawn from the force and come into his own father's inheritance after another of many civil wars within the Earth Kingdom claimed my grandfather's life (and I must emphasize, for a moment, what a shame it is that I'd lost a family member to the Earth Kingdom's chaos before I was even born). He had been strict and unforgiving in the way that military are, and he did not care that I was merely a child because he hardly cared at all. It was clear in the way that he disciplined me that he felt an obligation to keep me alive and educated and that was all. I won't be detailed about it, but my punishments from him were often brutal and severe or otherwise completely unreasonable, a physical communication of how little I meant to him. I can remember growing to resent his being home because it usually meant that I was going to suffer some pointless chore or be beaten for not doing as I was told.

He often said to me, when I complained, that the hard work and the beatings built character. I suppose they did, because they certainly built _my_ character, but I don't think that I am the woman he wanted me to be. Then again, I don't think he wanted me to be anything more or anything less than self-sufficient, if for nothing other than so he could be rid of me.

My mother, both from what I was told and from what I gathered, was born with nothing particularly wonderful to inherit but her own mother's beauty. Some way or another, she caught my father's attention and married her way into a decent fortune. Her control was markedly different from my father's in that she did not physically abuse me, but rather attempted to mentally condition me into thinking just like her or not at all-- I imagine that she supposed I might as well serve as an extension of herself for when she was gone. I was too young to really understand what it was that my mother wanted, and to this day, I'm still uncertain, but it conflicted too greatly with my passions and my personal wants-- which, though young, I did indeed know. She denounced my ideas too often and kept me from pursuing anything outside of the life she'd planned for me indefinitely.

I eventually learned to ignore her, and to be viciously hurt every time I did. I grew used to it. And I gathered at a very young age that my parents held no love for me. A responsibility to at least ensure the survival of the life they had created, sure, but no sense of emotional obligation or genuine concern for their progeny.

By the time I was six, I had been molded into a model student, moderately skilled fighter, exemplary-mannered outside the home, and ultimately the image of a perfect child. The children that I kept company with during school were approved by my parents and their own parents had approved of me, artificial relations not of my design. I kept to myself when I could, which was most of the time, as a result; my natural temperament isn't too social, but I had also a desire to foil any plans my parents might have had by making me friends with admittedly unimpressive strangers. Consequently, I developed a rather cold outward persona-- or so I am told.

While I was in school, I was afforded a better elementary education than many of my peers and given the opportunity to learn about the early history of the Earth Kingdom and the basic laws of the Earth. I excelled in all of my studies, but I was particularly gifted in the sciences, both social and biological, and eventually discovered that these were my favorite subjects to learn about. My unending curiosity about these sciences gradually manifested into an interest in the health of my home land, and I invested what little time I could steal away from my mother's watchful eye and my father's brutal work in reading simple books detailing the history of my nation.

I'm sure most people today, born of the Earth Kingdom or not, are privy to the Earth Kingdom's humiliating penchant for corruption. Even when I was just a young girl reading elementary books, it was clear to me that my people were guilty of a special kind of fragmentation, and that it must seem to the world that within the earth lands, nothing can ever be resolved correctly. The reigns of the 53 monarchs before me each speak for themselves. The War of Chin the Conqueror under the reign of the 46th Earth King, the resulting civil unrest of said war, the peasant uprising in Ba Sing Se the same year, the mistake of creating the Dai Li to quell it, the incompetence of the Council of Five from its establishment to now, the raging criminal activity following Earth Queen Huo-Ting's coronation, and the anarchy following her assassination are only a few examples of the Earth Kingdom's shortcomings and failures.

I can say with certainty that the cause was, of course, Human's Greed, but it was ultimately disunity. It was apparent to me that the divisions between the people of the Earth Kingdom, because of their cultural differences and social standings, were the greatest flaw of the nation. By the spirits, the greatest city of the Earth Kingdom is known-- _heralded_\-- for its physical embodiment of a cruel hierarchy. The "great walls of Ba Sing Se," the "impervious rings of Ba Sing Se"-- they're glorified for being exactly what they are: barriers. Obstacles to unity and enemies of commonality, of leveling. They are more than just robust walls, they are every-day reminders of the difference between "you" and "me," and once history was ready to follow its pattern-- once the oppressed were ready to be free-- these walls begetted the downfall of Queen Huo-Ting.

Do not misunderstand; I recognize the importance of Ba Sing Se's insurmountable defense. If not for them, the One Hundred Year War would have surely taken half the time. But the walls are there for _defense_, and they are being used to offend the very people they are defending. This is an intentional irony, and it is the motif of too many of the Earth Kingdom's traditions.

Division has always been the bane of the Earth Kingdom. Division and a (at this point) pointless desperation to cling to the past, which bears the sigil of the motif I mentioned. It is evident. The people of the greatest land mass of the world are notorious for their internal disputes and unnecessarily complicated political system (which is a direct result of the disputes and always favors the greater will, not the greater way, another massive flaw in its governing). With such a vast nation, it was only natural that a multitude of different cultures had arisen, and when each and every culture wanted to remain dominant and pure, fighting began to determine which would be the one to govern the region. Each culture stood its ground, and a point eventually came when we became known for our stubbornness and lack of willingness to change or compromise, our strong wills and unshakeable pride. It came to the point where many city-states-- before even Huo-Ting-- did not bend to the will of the Earth Monarch, who is supposed to be the ultimate central authority, and remained allegiant to themselves, which I often criticize with their contradictory pride in the kingdom as a whole.

I did not live in Ba Sing Se-- in fact, I was far from it-- but I knew enough of it from my books. I could see no friends in the great city, only disagreeable neighbors and ignorant leaders.

At home, away from my studies, I worried more about my personal problems in typical juvenile fashion. In great contrast to my performance at school, I often argued with my parents-- I was born with a strong will like most everyone else in the nation. And though it was inevitable that I be molded by their parenting-- that is, caused to reflect their values in my actions without my conscious consent-- I rebelled hard against their harsh methods and expectations.

Most of my memories of my mother and father are not pleasant. I can recall most clearly the punishments I suffered when I expressed my childish interest in being an intellectual of some sort, a scientist of a nature that I can't quite recall. I had a dream of bringing new knowledge to the world and improving society through discovery. But the type of scientist didn't matter, neither did what for; what mattered was that I wanted to be something other than a wife or a soldier or whatever it was my parents were trying to make me into (I don't think even they truly knew). For my insurgence, I was forced to stand out in the rain until the storm ended, no matter if it took an hour or the day, and then I cleaned myself before facing my father in a spar without any rest. He'd effectively beaten the resistance out of me that day. For the simple purpose of lessening my premature stress, I never expressed my interest in science again. Though I never let go of it.

One would think that my obvious aversion to my militant and severe upbringing would discourage any future desire to be involved with anything military. But the reality is as I already mentioned: it was inevitable for me to not be affected by my parents' regime-- some things became habit, like my degree of care with my quarters and waking up at dawn every morning. I happened to find stability in the controlled and precise nature of military expectation rather than trauma, given that aside from my father's cruel parenting, order had always appealed to me anyway. I always had my personal things in an orderly fashion and always presented myself formally to others regardless of my parents' insistence. Order was a thing I was already set to seek, from the moment I was born. This is what would eventually draw me towards the Zaofu guard when I matured.

Over the course of my six years of life thus far, the Earth Kingdom economy had become stressed once more under the demands of civil war and shaky political movements. I didn't know it back then, but Earth Queen Huo-Ting had just taken the crown in Ba Sing Se, left unstable by the 52nd Earth King's dispute with Fire Lord Zuko and backlash from the lands stolen in the Northwest, and began a new, even more tumultuous, era for the Earth Kingdom. It had affected where I lived most dramatically. As tax payers, my mother and father were feeling the brunt of this change, even if they were better off than most. And as a former military officer and supporter of the crown, my father was called upon to lead the fight against civil outlash in my state. He was stressed and absent more than I can recall him ever being, and my mother had gradually become colder and more withdrawn than usual under the societal pressures of keeping house, husband, and child. This, in addition to having a supposedly useless child, is what I suspect caused them to finally cast me aside.

My parents began to neglect me in addition to requiring things of me as it suited them. I truly became their puppet during the sixth year of my life. Knowing that I was not loved, and needing freedom from my parents' tyranny, I ran away.

I was seven years old. I remember arguing with my father over something admittedly petty, fed up as I was with everything else. The argument escalated easily with his stress from fighting the war and my rather short fuse at the time. I had reached my limit. I struck my father in anger as he had struck me, and was immediately sent tumbling into my bedroom, a fresh red mark on my cheek, waiting to bruise. My father locked me in my bedroom for an indefinite amount of time, telling me that I had forced his hand. Trapped in my room for at least a couple of days, I was given nothing to drink or to eat, and I was not allowed to ask for anything. When I had finally had enough, I used what little earth bending I had been allowed to learn and made my escape through the very wall of the house, breaking the brick apart with untamed brute force.

As I ran away, I looked back and saw my parents standing by the hole I had created, looking out at me, watching me leave. They seemed worried, but I know that they never tried to get me back. Not a single guard or poster with my face on it greeted me in the following year I spent wandering the land. If I had to guess, I would say that they were disappointed that their little doll had been lost.

I decided within the moment between fleeing my home and reaching the outer city that what I had done was for the best. And not once, since then, have I ever changed my mind.

πππ

Kuvira yawns silently and small in her dim emerald chambers, eyelids heavy with tire. She decides to end her entry there.

Thick tendrils of her hair slip over her shoulders and descend around her face like a curtain as she gazes down at her pages, the tips brushing softly against the words she's written. Gently, Kuvira moves the hair away and groups it over one shoulder. She takes the pages and orders them appropriately before setting her pen atop the stack and setting the stack aside.

It's been about four months since her arrest; four months since the fall of the Earth Empire; four months since losing everything that really mattered. Kuvira hasn't made anything harder for anyone, hasn't been difficult. She's peacefully accepted the Avatar's mercy and pleaded innocent in court. She's taken her unjust punishment with a grain of salt, but otherwise respected the court's decision. The first months of her imprisonment, she's been nothing if not the ideal prisoner.

So it hadn't killed them to give her some paper and a pen.

Though it's proven difficult for them to give her anything else. Having the honor of being a high security prisoner means that she can't have decent things, apparently. Just chains and a hard floor, and some measly meals every afternoon and night. Kuvira sits on the jaded floor of the prison designed just for her, green and elegant and monumental (she thinks it's a pity something so beautiful is wasted on her unjust, pathetic imprisonment, wasting resources on an overglorified cage. she can see that the worst part of it won't come until she's dead, though; they'll herald this prison as the great tomb of Kuvira the Great Uniter, keeping it polished and prim and perfect for tours so Republic City brats could be fed false truths and learn absolutely nothing about history), because they couldn't be bothered to give her a futon, let alone a cot. She's made to suffer the eventual numbing of her legs on a daily basis. Not that she can really tell the difference between night and day; there aren't any windows. She counts her meals and establishes a system for determining which day it most likely is. But for all she knows, it's been a full year.

"Don't be dramatic, Kuvira," he tells her after the thought, always the voice of reason these days, as Kuvira gives up on being decent and lays flat on her back against the floor, "it ill suits you."

Kuvira's sprawled out form deflates as she sighs and her tired eyes stare aimlessly at the high ceiling of her prison. She gazes up at it with the terrible pinch of desperation building in her throat, her body robbed of the ability to sense and manipulate the Earth. It's a numb, maddening feeling; she's trapped within herself now too.

"Leave me alone," she says to him, her mind weary. Her eyes close so that she can try to fall asleep. "You're not helping."

Honestly, telling her what suits her and what doesn't; who does he think he is, to presume to know her at this point?

"I know you well enough," he reasons for her, because why wouldn't he know what she's thinking?

Kuvira senses him moving closer and turns her head towards the far wall, in the direction opposite of where she feels him drawing nearer. She huffs irritably and tries to ignore him. She needs to sleep.

"I've been at your side long enough to." he continues, a ghost of a touch reaching Kuvira's shoulder.

Kuvira's eyebrows pinch together in discomfort at his words. A rush of anxiety threatens to upheave her weak composure as the truth edges nearer to the front of her mind, and to alleviate a fraction of her unease she mumbles, "Just go. . ."

His response is a light huff of disappointment right next to her ear. She doesn't wonder why she can't feel his breath or smell his scent, or why she's so damn adamant about not looking at him. Maybe because it's all too painful to remember.

"I'll help you get through this, Kuvira," she hears him say. His voice is gentle and patient, parts of him that she's never deserved. Kuvira knows that by now, he's taken ahold of her hand and is moving in even closer-- or maybe she's moving. "You're not alone," he tells her.

A very real pain hits her heart at the sensation of his phantom embrace, and Kuvira begins to quiver.

"You'll never be alone as long as I'm with you."

Kuvira shrinks away from him after that. She runs from the memory of him that's somehow resurfaced and made itself real. She curls into herself for warmth and wills herself to ward him off, to stop fabricating feverish dreams in her moment of weakness. It hurts more than she thought to brush his caring fingers away. She focuses on the cold embrace of her chains instead, when she feels that pain, and the unforgiving hardness of the emerald floor. They come to replace the weight of his arms.

Kuvira pulls long and hard against her chains bitterly, making them taut with her simmering emotions, gritting her teeth against more than just the pain in her wrists from the cuffs.

Because she _is_ alone.

Baatar is dead and she's utterly alone.

Not for the first time-- and certainly not for the last-- Kuvira falls into a rocky sleep to thoughts of her meaningless sacrifice. She tries to remember why she had felt so strongly about the Empire that it's complete unity was worth more than her fiancé's life. She tries to remember why the United Republic mattered at all.

If the answers ever come, she'll save them for the book.

But for now, Kuvira sleeps.


	3. Chapter II: My Exposure to the Kingdom

The evening sun hung low in the sky and cast scarlet shadows over the earth. It was pretty like that: half-set and red and pink and gold.

Red light touched the surface of the river she walked by, its flow heading south as she went north. All the ground within a meter of the river was damp despite rain not having fallen in a while. Her feet hurt from walking so far; how long had it been? two weeks? If she was right, then it'd been just about. Her shoes were already beginning to look as burdened as they were, dirty and torn in some places. Her socks looked worse.

There were people weeping on the other side of the river, she noticed. A lot of them were adults, but some of them were children her age and some were younger. The adults moaned in pain, despair etched on their faces as their thin bodies writhed around on the ground just across the way. Gung Shu river was not a big river-- in fact, it was rather small and very thin in comparison to others around the world from what she knew; the suffering people could reach their arms about a third of the way across. Their dirty fingers beckoned her over, their hoarse voices begging for anything that she had to give. But Kuvira had nothing. She had nothing to give them.

The children cried. Their wails went up high and churned the water, made the adults' ears bleed. A lot of them dipped their hands into the river to try and drink, or they dragged themselves in-- to bathe maybe, or drown themselves to escape the misery. Kuvira's eyes widened when she saw them and the river, when she witnessed their bodies sink to the riverbed and the water turn with their blood. She realized it wasn't the sun turning the river red.

With the horror of it only growing inside her, her breaths came quicker and her heart beat faster. She covered her ears to escape the horrible sound of the people's suffering. She ran away with her hands firmly over her ears, following the river's path. But the horrible noises never went away.

Instead she ran right into a woman on her side of the river, headfirst. Kuvira backed away from her to see that the woman's clothes were torn and dirty, just like her own, but they were also covered in blood. The woman raised her shirt and showed Kuvira the ugly gash across her abdomen, the broken bones and singed flesh. She cried for help, for aid, for water or food, and cursed an unintelligible name all the while. But Kuvira didn't even have those things for herself. She didn't know the owner of the mangled name. Frightened and plagued by guilt, Kuvira ran away from this woman too. She ignored the woman's pleads to save her children and abandoned the river altogether. She couldn't take it anymore-- she couldn't take it anymore.

Kuvira ran nonstop into the woods.

She was grabbed. She looked up and saw a soldier dressed completely in dark green, a maleficent mask of the same color covering his face. He wore a battle helmet and possessed no obvious weapons, so he must have been a bender. Curious rings of metal hugged his biceps and his calves. His gloved hands were rough and harsh as he handled her, pinning her to the ground despite her violent attempts to be free of his vice-like grip; she never took anything lying down. Kuvira growled, and she thrashed. She bent the earth and she bent the metal and she hurt him with his own weapons.

And yet he never let go.

She was dragged to a camp. There were others there, some dressed like her in tattered cloth and some that were cleaner-- newer. All of them were hunched over and working, regardless. Some of the nicer-looking people seemed faimiliar to her.

But before she could place who they were, Kuvira was thrown to the ground at someone's feet. When she looked up, following black boots to moss green trousers to forest green coat to metal bands to black eyes, she saw the woman in charge of the camp.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew this person as herself.

It was startling, yet Kuvira's attention was captured by her own black eyes-- black holes, pits into the cold depths of her very own soul-- and she was shown the desolation and loneliness and rot festering inside of herself through them. With her every strained and fearful breath, the holes in her own face gaped, widening, dilating and expanding like a slowly encroaching sickness. The ink of her own eyes then dripped down her own face as streaks on paper until Kuvira was consumed, sucked into her own void, and everything was black.

All the air was stolen from her lungs, replaced with frost, and her breathing stopped.

**_You will get what you want._**

IIII IIII IIII

Kuvira jolts up from where she lay on the stone floor, heart racing, mind spinning. Her skin is damp and her lungs can't seem to snatch enough air with each inhale.

Well. . . that hadn't lasted long-- sleeping. If it can even be called that. It's only been-- what? two or three hours? she guesses-- after she'd closed her eyes to try and rest, and not a single one of those flimsy, fleeting seconds did Kuvira get any rest. She steadies her breathing and recalls the images from her dream while carding a hand through her hair-- she's tired, but she decides that the ominous dreams fabricated by recalling her pitiful childhood and unsuccessful campaign are too much and definitely _not_ worth a few more hours of sleep. So she doesn't try to go back.

Kuvira sits up and sighs, her eyes closed against the all-consuming emptiness of her emerald cage. It's only slightly better than seeing the ghostly cavern stretch out before her.

Blindly, she reaches for her stack of papers and pen. It isn't hard to find them; she always keeps them on her right, behind the chains. She savors the weight of the items in her hands before setting them down and poising the pen over the paper.

She can't escape the memories; she might as well write them down.

IIII IIII IIII

**Volume I**

**A Retrospect**

**Chapter II**

**My Exposure to the Conditions of the Kingdom**

There was a time in my childhood where I was completely alone in the world. Fortunately for me, this period only lasted about a year; unfortunately, I met plenty of other children on the streets whose circumstances were much worse than mine during this time of my life.

When I first ran away from my home in inner Ji Qiang, I had the childish disillusion that I was going to do what I'd envisioned a year before: become a scientist. I didn't know how, and I didn't really know when, but I was sure that somehow, sometime soon I was going to gather intellect and do great things. I quickly discovered the first night I spent on my own that I would have more important things to worry about, like food and shelter, before I could do such a thing.

My first night alone, I don't think I slept at all. After running almost nonstop from my house to the outskirts of the inner city, I was exhausted and found a large tree to lay under as I recovered, but I didn't trust my situation. I was fearful that an adult-- or even another child-- would approach me while I was unaware. It was largely this instinct that kept me alive for the next year.

My hunger had abated by the morning after, but I felt weak from having nothing to eat or drink in days. This knowledge set me on a search that led me to not only food, but transportation. I spotted a farmer's cart stopping at the local market and stowed away on it just before it left. The more ripe fruits and vegetables that the farmer hadn't been able to sell became my breakfast and lunch that day, and while I hid in the corner of the cart out of his immediate sight, I huddled underneath some of the burlap sacks and miscellanious tools he kept in addition to the produce. The trip was long, and I don't think I'd ever been so hot in my life, though the possibility of my immaturity dramaticizing the event is likely.

My luck ran out once the farmer arrived to his land. He came around back to check on his things and found me. I was driven out rather aggressively-- apparently I wasn't the first to have hitched a ride on his wagon and steal his food-- and forbidden to set foot on his land ever again. I didn't mind being banned very much. Now that I knew what this farmer was like, I was actually rather glad that I had learned early on that he was not a reasonable target.

Perhaps most despicable of my year alone was the necessary evil of having targets; after the farmer, I walked and found myself in another resident area, and I reasoned that the law of this new life I lead was to steal or die. I learned which people were easier to steal from, when it was easier to steal from them, just how much I should take to avoid too much suspicion, and I even became involved with other poor children who had been forced to resort to theft. For a brief period, I joined this group on the streets who had scraped together something of a club or society for themselves. I lived with them in the small slums on the outskirts of Ji Qiang in an abandoned shanty home for the first two months or so after my defection from the inner city. Many of the kids were around my age, but a few were older, in their teens. As the law of the jungle mandates that the strongest lead the pack, the teens were in charge of our little group. And it was with these children that I had my first experience with corruption.

Human nature mandates that simply having power is not enough, that power means nothing if you don't use it-- and, in most cases, is useless if not abused. This isn't reality, of course, but it is part of the Human Condition to needlessly raise the stakes of survival as a consequence of societal advancement. Amongst the other kids in the slums, all of whom were younger and weaker than them, the teens reasoned that they could call the shots, that they could better themselves at the expense of those who could do nothing about it, and that they could get away with it by threatening to make matters even worse for those who rebelled. I suffered their tyranny only for as long as I had to. What I hadn't told anyone was that I was a bender, and that if I wanted, I could attack any of them. By Raava's grace, I was pardoned any altercations where I had to seriously defend myself before I took the time to hone my abilities. I eventually fought my way out from under the teens' control once my earthbending ability was adequate. I'm not aware if my actions liberated any other children or not-- at the time, I didn't care-- but that was the first and last time that I would allow myself to depend on anyone else in such a way.

For the next three months, I wandered Ji Qiang with nothing but the same three bundles of clothes-- the first from my home in inner Ji Qiang, the second and third from unsuspecting merchants in the markets while I was with the other children-- and a shallow canteen that was empty more often than not. I bathed when I could, which was just often enough to not be rare. The state of Ji Qiang has a narrow river that cuts through it from north to southeast, and I often followed this river for direction. When I was lucky, I came across a secluded section of the river where I could have my privacy. When I was clever, I swindled enough silver pieces from passerby to afford one night in a hostel, and I bathed there. Washing my clothes was an even greater luxury than bathing at this time of my life.

Along my travels, I learned that the eastern side of Ji Qiang was worse off than the western side, and that there were no ports along the southern coast. Southeastern Ji Qiang was just a few taxes away from being impoverished, actually, and northwestern Ji Qiang flourished. I eventually learned, once I'd left Ji Qiang and matured in Zaofu, that this was due in part to the Fire Nation population in the northwest that maintained solid trade relations with wealthier Fire Nation merchants. I'll elaborate more on this discovery in a later chapter.

At some point, I can't really remember when, I decided that I'd had enough of Ji Qiang, and that my scientific pursuits-- which I had not forgotten for longer than a few moments at a time-- might better come to fruition elsewhere. Being only seven, I had elementary knowledge at best of how things worked, so the simple solution, it seemed to me, was to go to the ports in the north and steal passage on a boat. So I followed the river running through the state, stole a map to give myself a better clue, and steadily made my way to the northern ports on foot. It took weeks and many stops and detours, and I was forced to swindle another pair of shoes along the way because of the damage that the trek wraught on my first pair.

I realize only now just how ignorant I was to the conflict going on around me as I traveled. The civil war still raged eventhough I had parted from my father, and sometimes I came across a camp with recuperating soldiers-- on which side of the war, I don't know, the army men often dressed as commoners and the commoners as army men-- or an abandoned battlefield. The stench of blood and the sight of wounded people would come closer to the river because the river was the unspoken line, the border between the northwest and the southeast, and battles waged across that line. I was spared the heat of battle, but I did encounter men and women and children who were hurt beyond repair by their enemies, and I was begged by adults for rations, and I witnessed ravaged earth upturned by vicious attacks by one side on the other. And despite all of this, all I knew was that this was the fight my father was in and that I needed out of it. My pace hastened from the day I first saw blood in the river and only grew faster with every step I took.

Once I finally arrived at the docks, I simply stowed away again. I wasn't aware that passengers needed passes and that overseas crews were strict about the number of passengers on the boats because of the scarcity of food in the middle of the ocean, but it didn't matter. My situation called for taking the risk-- I had few other options to choose from, most of them were as appealing as taking my chances on the boat, and starving was a common likelihood amongst them all so there wasn't much of a difference to me.

The ship set sail in the evening and arrived to the mainland on a dewy morning two weeks after. Along the trip, I stayed below deck, crouched behind barrels, fighting over scraps with the rats. I didn't bathe, and I hardly swindled enough water from forgotten canteens to survive. But I did. And once I heard the crew shouting about the mainland, about Gaoling and Tu Zin and the port and merch, I knew I had finally arrived to my destination. Sneaking my way off of the ship seemed more difficult than sneaking on it, but I managed, and I fled into town at the first opportunity.

The ports of Gaoling were bustling and alive, and didn't look too bad. The merchants there seemed decently successful and there was an even greater diversity of Kingdom-born people all around me. This prosperity enjoyed on the very fringes of the Kingdom mislead me to believe that I had finally found where I wanted to be.

For as soon as I left the port, I was met with a poverty more severe than I thought possib--

IIII IIII IIII

Kuvira catches herself as she begins to drift off and her chin meets her collar. Her head snaps back up as the final traces of childish hope fade from her heart, replaced with the cold and unforgiving wisdom of an adult, her eyes readjusting to the dark. She fights it all back by forcing a small spurt of chi through her blocked points, making her channels burn, and dwells on that pain instead to clear her head of red water and gray skies (or, at the very least, force her to focus on the problems she has now and not the problems she's already escaped). The searing sensation grounds her here.

Kuvira's hair is falling around her face in inky black tendrils again, obscuring some of her view of the paper and the pen in her hand, but she doesn't brush them aside. She keeps writing.

IIII IIII IIII

\--le.

I quickly found myself in pursuit of some food to sate the aching hunger I'd been suffering for the past days. I rushed into the bustling area and then out of it, my sights set on an easier playing ground, if you will. All I found were poor people with poorer resources and the poorest things to offer. The produce that venders sold was rotten, the fish spoiled. People sat hunched over and haggardly on many corners. I remember my hunger folding over and burying itself under my thirst as time went on and I failed to find something worth stealing.

Gaoling proved to be wholly impoverished in the south, so I had no luck. I ate what I had to to survive the next days, then continued to travel further inland out of curiosity and desperation. With no obligations to school or family, I was free to do as I needed to find reasonable resources for my survival. All I found in north Gaoling, however, was a stretch of corruption in poverty's place.

The state was bare economically, but rich with culture it seemed; as I dodged in and out of a few expansive properties that belonged to struggling farmers and healthy nobles, searching for something more appropriate to get me through to tomorrow, I noticed a few peculiar things.

A man came riding through a noble's land with a bull-drawn wagon full of fine produce. Naturally, I followed him. Through a few acres of fine land came the noble's estate-- I recognized it as such because for seven years before that moment, I had been surrounded by such nice things and told to appreciate them. I knew that only people like my parents, prestigious and wealthy, had homes like the one the farmer had led me to. I hid behind some bushes to the side of the entrance a few meters away so that I wouldn't be spotted. I observed a group of four armed men who resembled soldiers come forth from their posts and greet the farmer just before the entrance, a few steps down the path.

There was some information exchanged, though I don't know what, but what caught my attention was the way that the farmer stepped aside and allowed the mean-faced soldiers to take his load of produce from his wagon. They stripped it completely bare, leaving only the bull, and instead of giving the weary farmer payment, they took from him a sack of gold and silver pieces that he offered with a bowed head.

It struck me mere moments after the obviously resigned farmer returned to his wagon and way home, the soldiers to their posts as two took the bounty further into the state, that the transaction that I'd just witnessed was very unfair. Later down the line I would learn that this practice was considered a form of kowtow, and that many lower-class farmers across the nation paid these unfair tributes to their governers (in addition to paying regular taxes to the state collector) for protection against other corrupt motives. This effectively perpetuated the kingdom's corruption on mid-scale and incited the civil wars that had been rising and falling since the time of my grandfather to now.

Left hungry and curious, I decided to follow that weary farmer to his home to ask him for some of his proper yields. But when I found him with a fragile roof over his head, a hungry family, and a bare table to mourn over, I changed my mind.

Instead, moved by some sense of compassion and new rationality, I returned a few days later and knocked on their door. I decided to try and work for my livelihood rather than scrape by stealing. I was allowed in to learn their names, though I regret that I can't recall them now, and was recruited by the family to use my earthbending and natural resilience to help them tend to the fields for the following months. Earthbending was apparently an uncommon skill in lower-class Gaoling, so what I offered was almost invaluable to them. The yields after those months were double the amount of the previous, or so I recall the farmer saying, and it was able to feed us all. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough.

The governer, somehow knowledgable of the farmer's reversal of fortune, began to demand even more from him. The farmer was forced to comply, and the family and I found ourselves in trouble once more. As time passed and conditions only worsened with my contributions, the farmer was forced to relieve of my labors. Afterwards, he took me to an orphanage just outside of the Zhao area where the nobles lived. Besides his obvious compassion and humbleness, I'm not sure why he bothered, but I suspect now that he intended to shelter me from the governer's twisted eye (who probably suspected or even knew that I was a bender) while making sure that I was still cared for. I was considerably distant from all the members of that family, but I know that they cared for me-- and I for them-- more than my original family had, and I remember missing them when the time came to part.

At the orphanage, things weren't much different than at the farm. I spent both the months on farmland and the weeks in foster care broadening and gaining healthy weight back. At this point, I was eight years old, I'd spent my birthday alone under the lonely wooden veranda by the dried-up lake, and I'd lived a year of eating about one meal every day. The orphanage somehow managed to provide me and fifteen other children with three meals most days-- mainly just rice and almost spoiled fish, but food nonetheless-- so I had little to complain about.

This is when I began to brainstorm again. Eventhough I grew more stagnant with less laboring to do, I did not grow complacent; I still desired to procure scientific knowledge and use it to revolutionize the world (the fires that fuel the dreamlike aspirations of children are not easily extinguished nor contested, so I had not forgetten or lost my passion). Sadly, the information I wanted I could not obtain. I found myself missing school at this harrowing realization, for after inquiring about it, I learned from the head of the home that there were no funds for a formal school where such information would be provided. In Ji Qiang, there had at least been a formal school in the southwest, where my family had lived, and a sad excuse for a formal school in a small eastern town I walked through on my journey. But in Gaoling, taxes were so high and economic opportunity was so low that no one, not even the esteemed governer, could afford to finance a school.

As a result of having little to do with my spare time, I often practiced my earthbending in small amounts, gaining better control over my element, and got into a bit of trouble. You see, I could not accept that the information I sought was out of my reach, and I reasoned that some vendor somewhere in Gaoling had a text detailing some of my interests. Accustomed to a way of thievery, I set out to swindle it wherever it was. I tried many shops and most times found nothing, but every now and again I would find something of use. I'm sure the head of the orphanage noticed the books I brought back with me but decided not to act on it. In truth, there were no formal authorities in southern Gaoling either, leaving crime rates high and thievery very common, so there was little to be gained or established by robbing me of my resources.

For a while-- a few weeks perhaps, just under a month-- I lived an impoverished life at the orphanage while honing my body and mind any way that I could. But things were slow. I needed to move rapidly again, accustomed to dashing around, so I went looking for something different-- anything, really.

And then I tried to steal from the wrong person.

Suyin Beifong pinned me with a wide-eyed stare-- with increduilty of which nature is unclear-- as she stopped walking past in the middle of mid-day traffic, her eyes glued to the small metal piece hovering just above my hand across the way. I remember a long moment where I stood shocked that she had noticed my seamless plight, and her eyes flicked back and forth between my face and the fist at my side which had quickly snatched her ring from the air to hide my method. When she took a step towards me, that was all the reminder I needed to run-- to disappear. I remember Suyin shouting after me as I darted into the crowd and rushed against traffic. I didn't stop running until I got back to the orphanage. The head of the orphanage took one look at me and I knew she could tell what I had done-- it was far from the first time I'd returned breathless-- and she once again turned a blind eye to my misdeed and went on her way, but I think she knew that that day was different than the others somehow.

It wasn't long before Suyin arrived at the orphanage; she must have gotten a better look at my face than I thought, or was more resourceful than she seemed. She had come looking for me. When I was sat down with her and the head of the house, I was made to return what I had stolen to Suyin. I learned shortly after that I had taken her marriage ring.

Despite my offense, Suyin seemed to take none; in fact, she took an interest. The next day, she returned with her husband and exchanged some words with the head of the orphanage. I was made to speak with Suyin again. She inquired about what I had done the other day and at first I denied it. But Suyin would have none of it, and she tossed a metal bead my way, causing me to react on instinct and catch it with a tense gesture of my hand. I had been stripped bare, my greatest secret revealed, and Suyin was so enchanted by it that she inquired about adopting me as soon as I expressed a general neutrality towards the idea. Before I knew it, I was packing my books into a bag and being taken from the one place in Gaoling besides the farmland that I did not completely abhor.

I don't particularly miss Ji Qiang or Gaoling; not enough bright memories. I'd lost much of my innocence at a very young age there, learning firsthand the cruelty of people and life. I think Suyin could see that. I'm still unsure about why exactly Zaofu's matriarch decided to pick me up back then-- my prowess and my unfortunate circumstance have seemed like enough for the longest time, but now I wonder-- but perhaps that was the simple truth of it: she wanted to rescue me.

IIII IIII IIII

Kuvira gently puts her pen down, the latest chapter of her book complete as exhaustion weighs heavy on her head. The pages containing her now immortal words are treated with more care and reverance than she affords even herself as the bearers of her final message, a finalized culmination of motive for her every step, her every breath, and she sets them behind her chains until they are to be elongated again.

Then Kuvira finally lays down to sleep, closing her eyes against the jaded emerald of everything around her and dreaming of dissenters and prison camps and blood red skies.

**:A/N:**

**The next chapter is when stuff starts to really pick up. Kuvira gets her first visitor**** and both stories begin to form.**


	4. Chapter III: Foundations of my Politik

**Volume I**

**A Retrospect**

**Chapter III**

**The Base Formation of my Political Ideology**

My politik began developing as early as 158 AG. Harsh exposure to the lowest and worst parts of the Earth Kingdom had permanently altered my view of the world, and I began to feel one way or another about pressing matters even if I didn't fully understand them. I knew enough at the time-- more than most middle or upper class citizens. The things I experienced in that year between households left an important impression upon me that I would never forget.

By the time Suyin Beifong took me into her home in Zaofu, I understood the hardships of poverty, the privilage of fortune, and the luxury of having trust and safety. I had witnessed firsthand the atrocious living conditions of the majority of the Kingdom: I knew exactly what needed to be changed and what needed to exist in the first place. Because I was taught this early, I was able to connect a lot of my future experiences with what I learned and recognize which specific actions needed to be taken in order to save the Kingdom from it's dismal predicament.

However, back then, after happening upon information rather than formally learning it, my knowledge was ultimately limited to three things: one, the queen was largely to blame for the lack of money in the states; two, the city-states fought with each other for economic and social reasons, like land and culture; three, the earth kingdom had been this way for a very long time.

As a child with this knowledge and firsthand experience in both extremes of my kingdom, I was able to analyze the happeneings in my life with a unique multicolored lense. I felt a pain in my heart at what I surmised-- at the idea of what was and what could have been. I wondered (albeit naïvely) why everyone couldn't enjoy what I had enjoyed before I ran from home. Why couldn't the entire Kindgom enjoy the prosperity I saw at Ji Qiang's mid western province and the positive buzz of its ports? Why did we always fight each other with _wars_ when we disagreed? And why didn't we fight for compromise? to preserve the union? to be a stronger nation?

Combined with the pain I still suffered from when my parents effectively abandoned me and the knowledge I retained from the history books I used to read, the infighting across the Earth Kingdom instilled in me a high regard for loyalty and a hatred for anything less. I saw infidelity as the root of most of the nation's evils if not all of them. For example, the Earth Monarch Huo-Ting was not at all loyal to her people, and she preferred to pamper herself and raise taxes to line her own pockets rather than distribute wealth into the states. Her nephew, Prince Wu, showed a similar mindset. And all the predecessors of the 46th Earth King. I was made aware of these things by conversations I overheard while I moved around and things I experienced personally like the informal kowtows in Gaoling.

I knew that the different regions of the Earth nation each had their different customs and cultures, and that these regions and their states achieved loyalty only to those of alike ethnicity. The concept of a united nation was lost in this way too, a casualty of time and the wars between people. I analyzed this, perplexed by its simplicity and backwards philosophy, and made it my foe. I analyzed all that my nation needlessly clinged to-- clan-like separation, outdated traditions that inhibited progress, traditions that contradicted the future most desired, a reliance on the world (predominantly the Fire Nation) to provide, and prideful negligence of our mistakes, our shortcomings-- and I felt a wave of irrate rage; I wanted someone, anyone-- maybe our own goddamn monarch and leader-- to do away with it all. Deep in my heart, I wanted it gone.

It had ruined my life and the lives of countless others. It forced good people like the farmer who took me in to pay tribute to useless people like my father who robbed innocents of all that they had. It kept my mother trapped inside her own head, burdened with chauvinistic virtues that never held any truth or real value, thinking so little of herself and every other woman around her that she simply did whatever my father said, whenever he said it, however he said to do it. It forced the elderly to labor until they fell in the fields with their aching hands clenched tight around their hoe, their only support, and to die amongst their burden as overworked cattle. It forced children to grow early, to learn too soon what the world is really like, to steal and lie and cheat and get caught in a vicious cycle of misdeed that, years later, would leave them shunned and unwanted, unable to do any better for themselves and without the mind to even think of doing any different.

All of it set us up for failure.

As I understood this, I developed the foundations of my politics with uniformity and balance (or the lack thereof) in mind. I gave more attention to the socioeconomic side of things, to the who, what, where, how, and why. I constructed the image of a prosperous future in my head. I believed in it too-- that somehow, someway, outside of my childish aspirations and fantasies, it could be done.

All we had to do was break free, I thought; it was as simple as running away from my parents in Ji Qiang.

IIII IIII IIII

_Two. . . three. . . four. . ._

Kuvira flicks up her middle finger, her useless finger, and her pinky finger. She keeps on counting, keeps on keeping count. It's dark and she can hardly see her hands in front of her face because she's got her eyes half closed, but she keeps using her fingers anyway. Maybe because its's something for her to do.

_Twelve. . . thirteen. . . fourteen. . ._

Her meals seem to have been a bit more consistent in the past few week(s)(?). Kuvira tries to recall them. She hasn't tallied anything down because there's nothing in here for her to use besides her pen and paper and both are way too important to waste on a calendar. Her lips ghost the numbers as she sees them in her head and feels them on her hands.

_Twenty-two. . . twenty-three. . . twenty-four. . ._

Thirty. Thirty-one. Then she starts over at one and goes on til ten.

It's been five months, she concludes when she runs out of days to remember. Five months since her imprisonment and three months since her official sentencing. Five months since she effectively killed her future, and three months since she's begun deliberately reliving her past, encasing it in palm oil and sap and eternity.

Kuvira rests her head against the high wall behind her, chin up, nose pointed towards the sky at an obtuse angle. Her fern eyes are squinted as she tries to see beyond the lantern above, peering into the darkness that looms high over her. She has begun to do this recently in times of exceptional boredom and/or when she's at a loss for words to continue. It helps to keep her head clear while she stirs her imagination and envisions open mountain ranges from a bird's aerial distance, the sun radiant, its light spilling over the great peaks, snow caps glistening, lake water shining, trees dancing while wind plays the rhythm of nature's breath.

Kuvira misses the outdoors. She maintains good behavior in hopes of getting some time out one day, but it isn't likely. She's all but resigned to a dark, lonely existence after what she'd done.

At the thought, Kuvira is heavily tempted to shut her eyes-- maybe she'll just forget how epically she ruined everything. She gives in to the urge and goes slack as she does. There's a deafening silence all around; nothing but emptiness ringing in her ears.

Then, unexpectedly, Kuvira hears the doors open.

She thinks it feels a little early for her evening meal, but Kuvira doesn't question it. As usual, the former commander stays still and silent as her food is brought to her, not planning to stir untll the doors close again.

But the doors close minutes too early, the footsteps stop halfway in, and there is no sound of a wooden tray being set down at her side.

Kuvira pulls her head forward from where it rests against the cold wall, her neck aching and stiff from its prolonged stagnance. She opens her eyes.

"Hello, Kuvira," her visitor greets.

It's the Avatar.

Of all people (or rather, of the few people), Avatar Korra greets her first. She stands in the middle of Kuvira's emerald chamber, trapped in there with Feicuì's dim green light and stale air, the crystals above them welcoming her into their almost garish glow. It's a weird thing for Kuvira to see; from where she sits, looking at Korra's frown and apathetic gaze, it almost seems as if they're in prison together.

Kuvira forces the delirious amusement she gets from that thought out of her mind as the Avatar stops before her. She turns her head completely away from the stone wall she's leaning against and faces Korra, focuses on the fact that Korra is standing and she is not; Korra isn't bound to the ground and stripped of her freedom like she is; there's an ocean between where each of them stands.

Kuvira's eyes meet Korra's only for a split second before they flicker around a bit, not caring how it must look to her uninvited company, searching for Baatar. She finds him watching all of this unfold from the other side of the room, distant recently (they've had another fight, something about Kuvira not being fair to him eventhough she had never asked him to come looking for her. why can't he just understand that she is trying _not_ to go insane?). He mirrors her position against the right wall, looking just as angry and perplexed as Kuvira feels but is too resigned to express.

When Kuvira's gaze returns to the Avatar, Korra looks mildly troubled. It's obvious she's stewing on something. Kuvira can see the uncertainty in her eyes, can see her squirming on the inside. A part of Kuvira is amused by it. But she chooses to respond in favor of letting the Avatar fish for words, tired of the odd silence herself. She speaks in a languid and dry manner that's a little bitter. "Why are you here?" she asks, peering up at the Avatar with narrowed eyes.

Avatar Korra's frown deepens. "I need your help." she confesses.

Kuvira smothers a derisive snort. "With what?"

"Tell me what you know about Commander Guan."

Kuvira's amusement dissipates, her eyes widening with intrigue. She tilts her head to the side. "What do you care about Guan?" she inquires.

Korra opens her mouth, then pauses. She seems to be assessing the woman in front of her for the half of a second, as if she had come in without considering whether or not she should divulge certain information to the criminal. Kuvira is tempted to roll her eyes, but she keeps herself from doing that by thinking of the ommitted details, the things she will certaintly never know if she offends the Avatar.

"Were you aware he and his troops never surrendered?" Korra continues in spite of whatever second thoughts she'd had, though now she actually sounds invested in the conversation; curious.

"What?" Kuvira's face scrunches a little in distaste at the news. She's more upset with the Avatar for assuming she had heard anything from her cell than she is displeased that one of her suboordinates had not respected her command. Her visage quickly falls into an even expression as she gets over the slight, however, and Kuvira looks down at the cuffs around her wrists pensively. "No," she mutters, mind on Gaoling, "I wasn't."

The Avatar doesn't elaborate after she answers the question, so Kuvira looks back up to meet Korra's gaze, bemused by the silence. She finds Korra watching her with skepticism, hands in fists at her sides, mouth in a distrustful flat line as she likely weighs the sincerity of Kuvira's words. Kuvira isn't worried; she hadn't lied, and there isn't anything for her to fear if she had. She just loses focus in the odd moment of quiet and ends up staring back at a now blank-faced Baatar.

Kuvira is forced to focus again when she blinks and Baatar is suddenly waving at her, motioning with a sweep of his hand for her to sustain the meeting between her and the Avatar; it would seem that there's more to be done yet. Kuvira doesn't know what it is there's left to do, but she'll definitely figure it out; she and Baatar are practically linked at the brain.

"Guan is a cunning strategist with a keen mind," she continues, causing Korra's gaze to sharpen with attention, "I put him in charge of my southern forces because I knew he could keep them in line," Kuvira surrenders the information with a huff, her legs unfolding in front of her stiffly as she leans against the stone wall. Shs eyes the Avatar with vague curiosity, head tipped to the other side now. "So what's he up to now?" she inquires.

Korra crosses her arms over her chest while looking above Kuvira's head. "Nothing yet besides refusing to surrender, but I'm worried he's going to try to derail the upcoming elections," she debriefs. Her eyes search around, mayhaps still wondering what Kuvira had been looking at earlier, then looks back down at Kuvira. "How big of a threat do you think he is?"

"If Guan hasn't surrendered by now, then you're right to assume he's planning something," Kuvira crossed her legs, "As far as threats go, if I were you, I'd treat him like a barrel of blasting jelly with a very short fuse. Chances are he'll succeed if uncontested."

"How would you deal with him if you were in my positon?"

"Guan is a bit unpredictable, but he respects any superior worthy of his trust. I'd bring along someone he might actually listen to-- someone he respects and would fall into line for-- and have them reason with him."

Korra raises an unconvinced eyebrow. "You mean all I have to do is talk him down?"

This time, Kuvira _does_ snort. "I said someone he _respects_; Guan's not going to roll over just because the _Avatar_ asks him to."

Korra crosses her arms over her chest. "Who do you have in mind, then?" she contests.

Kuvira raises an eyebrow suggestively, the beginnings of a smile playing on the corner of her lips as she stared intently back at the Avatar. It only takes the Avatar a few seconds to get where she's going with this.

"You want me to bring _you_?" she asks incredulously.

Kuvira comes slowly to her feet, motivated by the sudden prospect of a potential break from the darkness and isolation. The motive turns her into a semblance of her former self, a weaker form of the Great Uniter, as she once again makes her case in chains.

"If I speak with him personally, face-to-face, I will make him concede defeat," Kuvira guarantees, her voice firm. She can't resist condescendingly adding on, "Then you and Wu can carry on with your little election."

Avatar Korra gives her a sideways look for the last comment. Her brows angle downward slightly at the bitter jest, a frown marring her face. "Thanks for the info," she tells Kuvira as she turns away with finality, "but I can handle Guan without you."

So she says. But Kuvira is good at knowing liars and even better at knowing the truth; Avatar Korra is worried. She has no idea how to approach Guan, and no idea how to make someone concede without physical force. Words are not her swords, her fists are, and she knows this. She's worried that there's no other choice but to rely on her enemy for resolving this problem.

(it certainly doesn't help that Kuvira's done Korra's job for her once before already, uniting and healing the Earth nation while the Avatar was broken and useless; she'd be saving the day again)

Kuvira thinks of this as she watches the Avatar walk away with her chin held high in defiance. Korra is halfway to the emerald doors when Kuvira spots Baatar out of the corner of her eye again. He's sobered up and also stood up from his place by the far right wall, a shoulder against the stone and his arms crossed over his chest. He glares at Korra as she walks past and Kuvira wonders if that's actually _her_ hate pointed at the Avatar or his own, possibly here to antagonize those responsible for his death.

The thought unsettles Kuvira. And then, as her gaze follows the Avatar out of her prison, she realizes that she'll be alone in the dark again, left to write her book in peace but with his voice whispering memories and words and revisions into her ear, helping her along but fostering the madness creeping up on her, and she may never get another chance to put and end to the plague.

She has to know.

"Wait," she blurts, rattling her chains with a jerk of her wrist. The Avatar stops.

Korra looks back with concern disguised as confusion, though Kuvira can see that the Avatar is starting to see how weak her former adversary has gotten in the past five months. The knowledge, combined with the look of near pity on the Avatar's face, causes Kuvira to falter. The words get stuck in her throat for a completely different reason, though.

_What happened to Baatar?_

It's too hard for her to say.

Kuvira diverts her eyes from Korra's questioning stare when the pressure built up in her throat doesn't recede. Her body shudders as she forces her breath in, then forces her voice out.

". . . Nevermind."

There's a moment of thick quiet before footsteps sound in the direction of the prison doors again as the Avatar takes her leave. The doors creak while they open, sunlight flooding in right behind them and blinding Kuvira, who shields her eyes as best she can with chains on, and words are exchanged between the Avatar and the White Lotus in brief relay before Kuvira is alone again.

With the Avatar gone, Kuvira feels safe to curl into herself. She sits back down, rests her forehead on her knees.

Minutes pass in silence, and then, "Do you really think there's a chance I survived?"

Kuvira winces at the inquiry. "Don't talk about that." she says.

"I might not be dead, Kuvira," Baatar insists in a knowing way that makes Kuvira's heart ache, "and I might not hate you."

Kuvira grips her forearms tight, her voice quieting. "I said don't talk."

"Oh. I see," Footsteps sound eventhough there's _no one else__ here_, and Kuvira can hear the shrewdness enter his voice. It strips her bare in an odd way; he only talks like that when he's observing and analyzing a machine or critiquing a modem. "You're trying not to care about me anymore. You think it'll make the loss in either respect much less severe."

"You're _still_ talking to me." Kuvira moans.

"You're still talking to _me_." he corrects.

Kuvira whips her head up to find Baatar only a couple feet from her side. She glares miserably up at the image of him gazing down at her with disappointment. "I'm trying to stop," she retaliates, her voice raised, "but you're not _helping_." _and you're just _me _aren't you__? why can't I stop talking to myself!?_

Baatar brushes her argument aside with cold, objective words, not offensive in nature but severe just the same. "You're trying to run away from me, but you haven't been able to force yourself to let me go."

_"Of course_ _not!_" Kuvira yells to the air, at the breaking point, her hands clawing at the sky in frustration, "I _love_ you. But I'll probably never see you again, and I don't need to be _constantly_ _reminded_."

Baatar comes closer to her, an inch away from her shoulder. When he speaks again, his tone is softer. "Then why didn't you ask the Avatar about what happened to me?"

Kuvira's eyebrows cinch together. Her voice shakes as she responds, though her tone of voice is clipped and just as angry. "_Because_, Baatar. What if. . ."

"What if I'm dead?"

Kuvira had thought it safe to assume, when she was thrown in here, that Baatar had perished when she'd fired on the warehouse. No one had bothered to tell her what became of him-- not even Su, who was adamant about making Kuvira feel like shit her every waking moment-- so she's been left to wonder and surmise. She decided to spare herself the devastation of having her hope defeated by just assuming he's dead and trying to accept it.

It hasn't done very much thus far except possibly reduce her anxiety, but it's come at the price of her sanity, so Kuvira's still on the fence about whether or not its worth it.

As if he's in her head (which, he is, he definitely is), Baatar says, "Kuvira, the uncertainty is haunting you."

"I know that,"

"Then stop pointlessly worrying about me. You have better things you could be doing."

"I don't, actually," Kuvira sighs heavily as she uncurls, glaring up at the empty space around her. She can't feel any other presence anywhere around her, like usual; in her mind's eye, she forms the image of Baatar watching her with a stoic impartiality she'd come to learn was his default expression when left to be himself. "I'm in prison with my bending taken away and no one else around," she continues, leaning on her side with her head in her hand, "what could I possibly be doing instead of slowly descending into madness?"

Baatar crosses his arms over his chest, tips his head towards her side in a vague gesture, but Kuvira knows what he's referring to; there's only so much it can be. She turns towards the pile of papers on the cold floor just beside her chains, the ink pen poised perfectly on top, and feels an odd feeling. She can't say what it is exactly, but it's better than the misery she feels when she thinks about Baatar. It's better than the failure she feels when she thinks about the Avatar. And it's better than the anger she feels when she thinks about Suyin and the other Beifongs.

It's nameless, but it lifts some of the weight.

(because now there's more than just the darkness and Baatar's haunting memory staring her down)

Kuvira picks up the papers and pen with deft fingers, and she makes the decision not to sleep. Idly, while she flips to her current page with Baatar just over her shoulder now, she wonders if the Avatar will visit again.


	5. Chapter IV: Suyin and Her Haven, Zaofu

**Volume I**

**A Retrospect**

**Chapter IV**

**Suyin and Her Haven, Zaofu**

The isolated city-state of Zaofu was the dreamland of every citizen of the Earth nation. There was public transportation all around, clean land, a multitude of opportunities for every resident, and the city itself shined radiantly. As I approached this new land at Suyin's side, I watched with awe as the mountain ranges towering above us fell back and surrendered their supremacy to the metal city; Zaofu was the star, the mighty symbol, the impossible personified. As a young girl seeing Zaofu for the first time, I was amazed by the very concept of the metal city as well as its reality; to me, anywhere in the Earth Kingdom that seemed as perfect and beautiful as Zaofu had to be a lie. The knowledge that I was not dreaming then had never given me so much relief.

The night I came to Zaofu, the domes had closed without Suyin and her husband. They twinkled with reflected starlight, the tram lines between lotuses lit with lamplight. In the seclusion of the enclave, Zaofu appeared to me as a midnight city made of stars and darkness. Such ethereal beauty belonging to the tumultuous nation in which I lived filled me with a hopeful joy for the first time in too long; the path to making my dreamlike aspiration of three years a reality had already begun.

In many ways, despite my differences with Suyin and the finer details of Zaofu society, I believe that Zaofu was where I was meant to be. Fate had brought me there for the sole purpose of equipping me with the tools I would need to effectively care for my nation in the future. And as I set foot on Zaofu's metal for the very first time, I knew this.

The great petals of the central town opened only for the matriarch of the society that late at night. We were escorted in with a group of the formal guard to the Beifong estate. I can't remember much of the experience, it's mostly youth-beautifed images of tall, elegant buildings, iron pathways, and pale jade streetlights, but I do remember the curious looks I received from Suyin and Baatar Sr's customs officers who greeted us at the in-between of two metal lotus petals. They let us in, and I can remember Suyin taking my hand to lead me along to the tram that would take us all to her home further up the range. The trip was brief. Once we arrived to the estate, which resided in a smaller lotus of its own, the guard was dismissed and I was given an empty bedroom and a private washroom to myself, as well as clean clothes to wear to bed.

Despite the hospitality I received, I wasn't allowed much time to grow accustomed to my new living conditions. Suyin was a very busy woman, and her husband was no less occupied with overseeing the physical integrity of their state. I was given three days. I got glimpses of Suyin's other children, including being woken in the night by an infantile Opal's screams on occasion, but I did not meet them until after those three days had passed.

My first day in Zaofu, I was under Suyin's watchful eye from morning to evening. She talked with me and most of our (albeit one-sided) conversation involved bending to some capacity. Suyin was clearly enthusiastic about the prospect of being able to hone my abilities; I think she was more invested than even me.

She asked me if I had a connection with the earth yet, a question to which I could only respond with confusion at the time. It was decided that I would simply have to show her what I could not communicate. Suyin did not observe me for long, my knowledge was limited due to the events of the past year. I demonstrated what little I could do at that age: topple cans, bend wire, wrinkle plates- small and subtle things. All that I needed to be unbelievably good at pick-pocketing and fleeing, but far from what I needed to qualify as an actual metalbender.

When I reflect, I can vaguely recall when I first discovered metalbending for myself. The discovery came completely on accident. I was being chased for committing another of many small crimes in Gaoling, and my pursuer cornered me when I tried to hide behind some sort of contraption. As I went to defend myself, there was nothing for me to use but the metal around me. By some miracle, I took ahold of the metal as if it were like any other bit of earth at my whim and propelled it at my attacker. They were so shocked that they were convinced I had done some kind of witchcraft, and they fled.

I was still young, only old enough to be in elementary classes, so I hadn't even known that metalbending was an actual practice that had existed for some years now and was not something of my own creation. But I kept quiet about my ability, of course, unwilling to attract unsavory attention in my situation. Once Suyin revealed the truth of my abilities to me, I was very simply shocked.

After asking me about my bending and fruitlessly inquiring about my life before we'd met, Suyin sought to put me in school. She gave me a short test to get a scope for my knowledge, and it was determined from the assessment that I would be held back two years. Even though I was the same age as her eldest son, I had lost a year in my wandering, and Zaofu had a different education structure than Ji Qiang. I was educated at the same level as Huan, Suyin's second eldest. The two of us didn't talk much, but we got along well enough.

Before my classes started, I was given to another family to be cared for. Understandably. Suyin personally saw to my placement in a pleasant foster home. The couple I was given to were kind, generous people who had the love and desire for a child painted in their expressions. I had never felt so welcomed before. It was strange that in Zaofu, a place I hardly even knew, I was given more true care and consideration in a few days than my parents had given me in seven years.

(Even so, as I would come to accept many years later, Zaofu was not where I hailed from and these people could not fill the hole in my heart that my parents had left.)

The fosters I lived with were close to the Beifong estate, just a short tram-ride away, so that I could visit the head family often. Suyin had made it clear that she desired to take me on as her protegé, so nothing any less convenient would do.

As I officially started my new life in Zaofu, I began to come across the Beifong children regularly. The eldest of us commuted to school together: Baatar Jr., Huan, and me. The twins and Opal remained at home with their parents for their pre-school educations, as I assume so did the brothers I travelled with at a time.

Fast-forward several years after that and I was a 14 year-old metalbender, the youngest since Toph Beifong's time. Suyin had introduced me to her dance troupe and planned on incorporating me into the most meticulous routine she had conjured yet. Throughout the next several years, being one of her ballerinas served as a hobby but also as a fine-tuner; as I danced, I gained. My bending, especially, improved as I maneuvered with metal through the air. My times with the troupe were some of my favorites. I admit that I miss them.

At 16, I had honed my skills enough to be qualified as an official Zaofu guard. I took the admittance test, passed adequately, and was given my station within the week. My time with the troupe continued despite my increased load, as I felt that there was still a lot of room for me to improve. The times in between were mostly spent in Suyin's metal gardens with Baatar Jr., in training, or at home resting.

When I was 18, I parted from my foster family and moved closer to the Beifongs in a home of my own. A higher education was in order for me as soon as I settled in, and I proceeded to attend the same secondary school as Baatar Jr.

I continued to train and serve with the guard, and dance in Suyin's troupe, juggling them with my advanced studies. I pursued an informal, specialized education in philosophy, physics, and government, subjects I felt would help me accomplish my admittedly evolved but unforgotten goals of revolution within the Earth Kingdom.

During this time, my relationship with the Beifong family began to evolve again. Of course, naturally, I grew closer to them all, but Baatar Jr. is the only of the Beifongs I truly bonded with.

Baatar and I, once divided as children by an unspoken respect for the other's desire for solitude, grew close. We were good friends by the time our secondary classes ended and I took up the position of Captain as he took on being Chief Engineer. We were busy, but we kept in touch and managed to see each other often enough. Of all the Beifongs, Baatar became my favorite to be around.

But even though we were doing well, there was a common sense of longing between us; we believed there was more we could do, things that we could improve, if only given the chance. While I was Captain and Baatar was Chief, I still answered to Suyin and he still answered to his father. Suyin controlled everything in Zaofu, from the agriculture to her children, which meant I could only command the guard so long as she approved my commands. Baatar was required to run all of his ideas by his parents first, which stifled his creative genius. We weren't satisfied with the way things were, and I sought a way to shift the tides without conflict, as I had been learning to do under Suyin's tutelage.

Nothing changed until the death of Huo-Ting.

The market suffered as trade with other states abruptly stopped. For the first time in Zaofu's history, there were bandits sneaking into the domes from beyond Gaoling. And refugees from the turmoil in Ba Sing Se came to our borders seeking asylum from a frenzy of their own creation, bringing a slew of other issues with them including a strain on Zaofu's resources as we attempted to do what little we could for them. News of the anarchy ensuing in the capital reached us by radio, and everyday it was the same dismal story. Something had to be done.

Perhaps two weeks after the Queen's assassination, the URN hosted a gathering between representatives from each of the four nations. They came to a consensus, then arrived in Zaofu three days later. I was summoned, along with a few other members of the guard, to Suyin's meeting room as security detail. I was the only one admitted inside for confidentiality.

The meeting itself was brief and not all that important. Everyone sat, there were some frivolities, then the request of Suyin was made. I held my breath once I heard the proposal, but the response the matriarch gave was disappointing.

Suyin refused to do what was asked of her.

Despite popular opinion, I do not fault her completely for the decision she made that day, I understand why Suyin refused. But I disagree with the notion that her reasoning was sound. While a concern, a non-royal leader in position to rule would not have been a true issue in light of recent events, especially if they were someone of Suyin's caliber and name. The Beifong family, even before Toph Beifong's time, had a rich history of aiding the nation economically and politically. In addition to that, Suyin herself had developed the most advanced society in the Earth Nation almost all on her own. Put simply, Suyin was in a prime place to aid the Kingdom, and her intervention would surely have been worth the few hundred voices of opposition.

She had the opportunity to change the entire nation for the better laid at her feet, and she refused.

I've never forgiven her for that. I would have worked endlessly for such a chance. I would have given my all towards correcting the madness that had befallen our country. I would have taken advantage of the situation to improve countless lives. I would have stepped up.

These were my thoughts. I stewed on this for several days after the decision was made. Suyin's refusal to help the Kingdom while she stayed in Zaofu struck me as an abandonment of the rest our country. I could not accept it. I lamented to Baatar about what happened, and how I felt. We agreed that something could and should be done.

So we began to talk about a plan for action that could sway Suyin. Though with time and many failed simulations, we gave up on that course of action. More and more, it seemed like we would have to execute the plan ourselves. So we did. Tiptoeing around Suyin and Baatar Sr., Baatar and I secretly met with investors we believed would be inclined to give us their anonymous support. We pooled all of our resources, then I pulled those from the guard who I knew to be exceptionally loyal, who would willingly follow me across the nation, and Baatar gathered his designs from over the years. His brilliant ideas would prove pivotal to our success later down the line.

In just over a year, we were ready to leave. I departed from Zaofu for the first time since I'd arrived there 13 years ago with less than I knew I needed, and more than I could have ever dreamed I would have.

IIII IIII IIII

Kuvira stares out the window with hooded eyes, tired but unrelenting. Even out of the suffocating, empty cavern that is Feicuì prison she doesn't feel comfortable sleeping. It's the nightmares; they plague her still, maybe even worse than before. She takes to talking to Baatar more and more often as a result, aware that she shouldn't but unwilling to be driven wolfbat insane by nightmares and residual thoughts of a ruined empire.

Kuvira contemplates crying to alleviate some of the stress, but doesn't like the idea of feeling weak or helpless. She remembers when she'd cried during her first nights trapped in Feicuì, and the memory still makes her an indescribable kind of angry.

It had started as a few tears, but they wouldn't stop coming. For every one she wiped away, another returned. She'd cried quietly and stone-faced for a number of quiet nights, her breath shaky with every inhale as she curled into herself against the cold stone walls. Kuvira eventually calmed, writing the moment of depression off as nothing more than a tryst-- and perhaps it had been-- but things still got worse as the darkness persisted.

Baatar showed up, for one thing. Kuvira recognized that entertaining her feverish imagination was a mistake; dwelling on regrets and memories was only subjecting herself to torture. But she had done it anyway to escape the all-consuming alternative. And even though the worst has passed now and she's constantly being watched by Korra or is talking with Bolin (in short: she isn't _alone_ anymore), Kuvira can't seem to give him up. He'd always been by her side, the only one she could ever trust. His presence was a comfort that had killed part of her to lose and she wasn't sure if she could go through that again.

If only she had something to _do_, something else to think about-- a life to live. Maybe he wouldn't haunt her like this if she wasn't thrown into the dark alone to grieve. Maybe she'd be haunted by other bad decisions instead.

But she doesn't have anything to do, and she hadn't been given the luxury of properly sorting through the baggage.

Kuvira rolls onto her other side so that the moonlight filtering in washes the length of her back in a delicate white-blue. She loathes that her room has such a large window in it with no curtains to soften the light, but she can't exactly complain; it staves off some of the worse memories- dreams of bloody battles fought in the dark where anyone and anything could suddenly lurch forward and grab ahold of her in an instant- and if she dares to bring it up with the others, Kuvira is fairly certain that Sato would instead elect to bash her head in to save herself the trouble.

As is typical at this point, Baatar comes to comfort her-- or she imagines him to comfort herself, whichever-- and distract her from the things she seems unable to escape.

Unlike most of the other times Baatar has appeared, she notices that he's wearing something different from his Earth Empire uniform. And that his glasses are off. Kuvira focuses on these little things as she's learned to do. The chill from her morbid nightmares begins to recede as her mind is occupied by familiar sweet nothings.

His touch ghosts over the height of her shoulder, warmth washing from the point of contact down her side, and Kuvira is too eager to remember a time when Baatar would kiss her on the neck at night and whisper words of endearment into her ear before bed.

Eyelids fluttering, Kuvira glances over her shoulder to look at him. As it turns out, Baatar is actually sitting on the edge of the bed in his old night clothes-- the ones from Zaofu-- with a comforting hand on her shoulder, not laying behind her in the bed with his chest against her back, his legs intertwined with hers and his chin tucked into the crook between her neck and shoulder, warm hips pressed firmly against her backside--

"What was it this time?" he asks, as if he doesn't already know.

Kuvira is wrenched from her heated reverie at the question. She sits up with a huff and turns her body to face Baatar. He lets his hand fall from her shoulder as she does, and she can't decide whether or not she rathers it that way. Given her embarrassing arousal, it's probably for the best.

"The Beifongs and the hellish war effort," she answers insipidly, bringing her knees to her chest and her arms round her knees. "The usual."

Baatar's brows raise at the mention of his family. "Was I there?"

"No," says Kuvira quickly, almost reassuring him, "No."

She thinks about Baatar to distract herself from the nightmares and the anger and the guilt; he's a _remedy_, the only thing she doesn't regret, not a plague. Never a plague.

(she ignores the fact that she's betrayed him and that _that_ plagues her, down in the depths she's banished her shame to; that she refuses to cast him away. she ignores how he's become her answer to almost every instance of discomfort, making Baatar probably the worst of her plagues, a painkilling drug to overdose on)

As if on que, Baatar's eyes soften with affection. He tilts his head towards her, a soft, somewhat meek smile on his face, the moonlight hitting his eyes so that they shine a ghostly limestone green. With an eerie sense of recognition, Kuvira realizes this is a younger Baatar she's talking to.

(a Baatar from before the Empire, before the fall of Huo-Ting, and before she had had the courage to embrace what she felt for him)

"There's something else on your mind," Baatar says knowingly, pulling Kuvira from her thoughts. One of his lithe hands raises to brush her bangs aside so that their eyes meet.

Kuvira sighs, heart aching at his gentleness. "I'm supposed to confront Guan in a few days. The others expect me to make him concede."

"Can't you?"

"I can," Kuvira says firmly, "I just. . . I need some direction. I don't know what I'm going to do."

And if she doesn't figure it out soon, she'll quickly go back to being useless, which means quickly going back to her cold, dark prison. She is almost certain that the Avatar and her team won't lose any sleep over that decision.

"You know Guan. You know his interests, his priorities, his personality," Baatar's hand glides softly over the cool skin of her cheek, an idle gesture of comfort, but Kuvira is almost frightened by how real his heat feels. "Just use them to your advantage." he tells her.

Kuvira blinks at him, taken aback by his. . . realness. Her mind is sure he's fake, but somehow her body is receiving Baatar's touches like he's actually _here_ and there's just a thin sheet of plastic over her body keeping the feeling of his skin from her. And his face. She's sure that she couldn't pull the image of him from four years ago from the dredges of her memory if she tried. He's been different for so long. . . she'd be fooled if she didn't know better.

Kuvira actually almost forgot how gentle he could be. It wasn't common anymore-- not like _this_\-- after the unification effort had gone long. Even though he was primarily an engineer, Baatar had seen and done his fair share of things during what was essentially just a pretty war (which is never _actually_ pretty). When the effort had just begun and there were only so many to do the heavy things, it was for the better that his tenderness be left behind. But being reminded of it makes Kuvira's heart burn with a strange longing.

Baatar, entreated by her prolonged silence, roots through her thoughts like the mental manifestation of desire that he is. His eyes make show of searching hers as he does. The action imitates a lover's insight, but Kuvira understands that that is all it is: an imitation. This Baatar, linked to her brain, will _always_ know what she knows, and she laments this as his thumb brushes over the high of her cheek. "It's not your fault," he says, "I did what I needed to."

Kuvira's hand comes up to touch his. "I don't regret anything." she insists.

"You're shaking."

Kuvira looks down at herself. The hand touching his is indeed trembling, the fingers on her other hand twitching with some inexplicable emotion. Kuvira grits her teeth; she's confused, she doesn't like this.

"I don't know what I'm doing," she finally confesses. Her hand falls from her face. "Ever since my imprisonment, nothing has made sense." Kuvira's talking about the Guan situation, but she's talking about Baatar too. And the tome she's writing that seems to be more of an autobiography than anything else, far from what she'd actually planned.

"You're just doing what you need to do." Baatar reassures as he moves nearer to her. Kuvira looks up at him, feeling inexplicably childish, unable to look away from his eyes. With his glasses off, it's easier to see them. Baatar has never believed her when she's said that she's actually partial to his eyes, to their shape and the mysterious undercurrents of darker green in his irises. Kuvira remains drawn to them as the space between her and this fabrication dwindles to almost nothing. Baatar moves his hand from her face to the small of her back.

"You're on the right path, Kuvira, and you must see it through." he whispers.

The right path. Was she really on the right path? It seemed more like the _only_ other path besides idly rotting in the core of a mountain. What if she was just on the path that delayed the torture?

Baatar is close now, his body warm and welcoming, and Kuvira slowly lowers her head to rest against his shoulder. Her eyes close as she does, savoring this lucid illusion, then squeeze tight at the feeling of his arms circling around her. It's a heartbreaking sensation. Kuvira lets Baatar in even further in her moment of long needed solace.

And then he kisses her forehead.

Kuvira feels her insides freeze over in fear and disgust as soon as it happens. The negative emotions grip her so suddenly that she doesn't know what to do with them. Her moment of perturbation doesn't seem to reach Baatar, in all its irony, or perhaps it's just her own cruelty backfiring. Kuvira flinches as Baatar goes for another kiss, this time on her lips.

"No," she says, backing away slightly. The pads of her fingers rest over his lips (that don't feel like anything at all). Baatar freezes, but his arms still encircle her. Kuvira swallows thickly and fights to find her voice as he stares at her like she's betrayed him _(again)_. "Don't. I can't. . . I refuse. After what I did to you. . ."

"Kuvira--" he tries to reason, moves closer again.

"You're not _real_!" she erupts. She is speaking more to herself than to him-- if she's speaking to him at all. Kuvira backs away from him with her eyebrows pinched together in confusion. Her heart rate elevates against her will, her breaths coming quick and shallow. Baatar stares back at her with devastation on his face; it leaks into his very being.

"I'm sorry," she apologizes after the silence stretches on long enough, her voice soft and quiet. Her breathing evens out as Baatar's crestfallen expression morphs into one of displeasure (for him, displeased is just a stoic downturn of the lips and stony eyes, but the expression still makes her feel guilty of every crime). Hesitant, Kuvira inches back toward him.

Baatar receives her.

"I'm sorry." Kuvira says again, wrapped in his arms now. She buries her face in his chest and imagines heat between them to soothe her aches. The warmth persists like it had earlier, impossibly soothing against her skin. Now that she's calmer, Kuvira wonders-- faintly-- if anyone else in the ship heard her outburst. Probably. They must all think her mad at this point.

Baatar rubs a comforting line into her back with his thumb, his palm against her shoulder. He murmurs random words of comfort that Kuvira can't fully understand, probably because she can't supply her own mirage with more than a few loving things to say. Nonetheless, the caring attention helps.

"Go to sleep," he urges Kuvira just as her eyelids begin to feel especially heavy. His words are hushed. "You know they'll want to talk to you in the morning. You'll need as much energy as you can get."

"But. . ." Kuvira begins to drowsily protest.

Baatar coerces her with a chaste kiss to the temple. "Sleep."

Kuvira's eyes slowly slide shut, her breath coming slow and easy. She falls soundly asleep.

And then it's morning.

* * *

**A/N:**

First, sorry for the intense wait, I did some serious revision to this chapter. Hopefully my writing has improved. Second, this is the last chapter with basic domestic flashback type stuff, we'll get into the real meat of the book next chapter. Finally, thanks to those of you who have stuck around so far! I think you'll enjoy the next update.


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